Marine experts expressed serious doubts about the stability of the Arklow Bank before a 99-year lease to develop Europe's largest offshore wind farm there was signed in January, The Irish Times has learned.
When completed in 2007, the €630 million project would have three times the combined capacity of all offshore wind farms currently in production, making a significant contribution to reducing Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions.
Each of the 200 turbines in the planned wind farm, some 10 kilometres off the Wicklow coast, would be 80 metres high at hub level. Its launch was hailed by the Green Party leader, Mr Trevor Sargent, as marking "the dawn of a new Ireland".
However, documents show that the foreshore lease was granted to Sure Partners Ltd by the then minister for the marine and natural resources, Mr Frank Fahey, in advance of a final environmental impact assessment of the scheme.
His Department had been advised that uncertainty about the Arklow Bank's shifting sands could destabilise the proposed 200 turbines and even the bank itself, with "severe repercussions" in terms of coastal erosion in Wicklow and Wexford.
According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, EIS Ltd, which had been asked to advise on the adequacy of the developers' environmental impact statement, noted even it had conceded that the stability of the bank "needs to be verified".
The Department's engineering division was also of the opinion that it would be best if the final decision on the proposal was left until after EIS Ltd have submitted its final report and recommendations on what became known as the "stability issue".
But Sure Partners Ltd, a division of Airtricity plc, was "anxious to have the lease in place before Christmas or very early in the new year in order that work may begin on the project in spring 2002", according to the Department's coastal zone management administration.
It recommended that conditions be attached to the lease, which was personally signed by Mr Fahey on January 11th, specifying that no work on the construction or installation of any phase of the wind farm could proceed without the minister's prior written consent.
In the event of any activities which cause or are likely to cause "unacceptable and unforeseen environmental impacts", the minister also has the power to require Sure Partners Ltd to take steps to ensure that such environmental impacts are addressed.
The lease also requires the developers to undertake a ongoing monitoring programme of the integrity both of the wind farm structures and of the sea bed at foundation level every six months during the first two years of operation, and annually thereafter.
When the stability issue was first raised, Rambøll, the developers' Danish consultants, insisted that the core of the Arklow Bank "is stable, as far as can be determined and the erection of monopile structures on the bank should not have any effect on the adjacent coast".
Geological advice to the department supported this view, stating that structures which had foundations deep in the core of the bank should have a high degree of stability "irrespective of the vagaries of the surface layers" and would not adversely affect the coastline. Meanwhile, an even larger wind farm with 220 turbines producing 660 megawatts is planned for the Codling Bank, to the north, by Eco Wind Ltd, a subsidiary of Treasury Holdings.
